walkersmith.net weblog

Katherine Hepburn (1907-2003)

"Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get - only what you are expecting to give - which is everything. "

"What you will receive in return varies. But it really has no connection with what you give. You give because you love and cannot help giving."

"Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then."

"'Isn't it fun getting older' is really a terrible fallacy. That's like saying I prefer driving an old car with a flat tyre."

"Life's what's important. Walking, houses, family. Birth and pain and joy -and then death. Acting's just waiting for the custard pie. That's all."

Katherine Hepburn (1907-2003)

Married to Andrea

I take such delight in being married, especially to my wife Andrea. I was never a person who thought marriage would have come my way, but it did, and well neither was I the person who thought marriage was worth anything, just a piece of certificate paper, a social thing. Nothing more. But marriage is something, its more, I only wish I could quantify the more'ness, the something'ness about marriage. Maybe in the future I will be able to put words to my ness'es.

fscking

The other day whilst waiting for a machine to recover from a crash I thought about writing about fsck the real bane on UNIX system administrators, the machine was fscking of course. Today I am really going to write about it, its been forty five minutes of waiting, my toes are frozen to the blue colour of the computer room controlled temperature, and it still has not come back up and finished its fsck. How long can it take? As long as that piece of space time string I expect.

For those of you in the know you must be asking why are you not using some sort of journalling file system. Well we could, our system, or rather todays crashed system is an HP-UX 11.00, and could quite easily have the a journaled file system. But somebody a while back when HP-UX was in its 9.x stages made a decision not to use it, and today at version 11.00 we still don't use it. I am not in on this decision making loop.

Can you believe, right now as I am writing this the machine has come back up, after some ninety minutes of fscking, that is fscking annoying!

So is fsck really a bane, not really because if the RAID which had been fsck'd did not come back up I would have been here all night trying to get things up and working again. Long live fsck, but bring on the journal'd file systems as well.

Asian and Bhangra Beats

Last night over here in Chile I was listening to BBC Radio One, in the UK it was around 0300h in the morning, time zones and all that. It was Bobby Friction and Nihals radio show coming live from Glastonbury. For me the show introduced a new style of music that I have not come across before. Its like a mixture of Rap and Asian style music. I know some of the songs have made it into the main stream but the stuff they had on the show last night was great. Well worth a listen, you can listen again by going to Radio One.

For me the Asian music softens the Urban sound, its soften the beats and also introducing new unheard, for me, rhythms. Mixed in is also the sound of Asian women singing, which to me hearing in isolation is not enjoyable, but in this context adds a depth to the feeling of the music.

Aged thirty and still listening to Radio One, and my sister said I never would, ha.

Wilber Smith: Adventures

I am currently reading a Wilber Smith book called Blue Horizon. I started reading Wilber Smith books when my sister gave me one to read many years ago, she had read nearly all of his books. I think it took my sister a while to get me reading Wilber but once I started there was no stopping me. The Courtneys and other family histories he wrote about were amazing.

One of the things that really sticks out in my mind and is brought back to me now with this current book is the adventure that is in these books. The books on the whole are set before the twentieth century, and the world is such a open unexplored place, especially Africa. There are adventures around every corner. I used to lie and read on my bed and dream about Africa, its vast unexplored openness.

And I suppose the sad things today is there are no unexplored lands left. Man is all over the world, all packed in tightly, there is probably very few places I could go to today where no man had been before. There are no frontiers, there are no more real adventures to be had any more, well at least on Earth. But its good fun to read about it.

Internet Explorer for Mac OS X

After it being the one web browser I used everyday IE is almost ready to be cast off my dock, accessed only through the Finder and the /Applications directory. Its being replaced by Safari of course. The only reason I kept IE on the dock this long is that some sites I used needed a password and were only stored in the IE app. As does happen with the IE app they dumped my passwords the other week. The last straw I reckon for this app.

Satellites and their Frequencies

The call came through here at 0900h Lima from our satellite provider for us to change the frequencies on our satellite equipment immediately. Nobody here in the office had done this before, the guy who normally does it is on holiday (our boss). The documentation though was right on, and after twenty minutes or so we knew what we were doing.

Here in Paranal and at other sites in Chile we are linked to the ESO WAN and Internet via satellite links. Its just happened that today our satellite provider wanted us to change the Germany transmit and our receive frequencies. Using the documentation we worked out the values necessary for our demodulated modem and Germanys modulators modem.

Then after some phoning around that covered three continents (North America, South America and Europe) we planned the change over for 1200h and 1230h. I was to be the central contact. I was on the phone and radio (CB) to three different people at one point trying to coordinate the change over. Chris was up in our satellite hut, some four kilometers away, talking to him over the Radio. Mike the guy in Germany was on phone number one and Bill at the satellite provider on phone number two.

Then some thirty minutes later we went on to coordinate the change of the frequencies between a second site here in Chile and Germany. This to went without a hitch.

Overall downtime at each site I would say was no more than twenty seconds. VOIP links did not even drop.

All in a days work...

M and D

My Mum and Dad are the real stars of the show today. They made me, they brought me up, they fashioned me into who I am. Without them I would not have achieved anything like I have done. Thank You.

Here they are slouching around on holiday in Chile a couple of years ago.

VLT - UT3 - Melipal

Yesterday (16th June 2003, late posting) was my last shift day, I write this at home, with my view over the Pacific blue and the moon still out in the morning sky, shining its last. Yesterday was a fun day, I got to monkey a round a little bit on the UT3 telescope. We Serco at Paranal are responsible for all things communication wise. And yesterday we were tasked with networking a small weather camera that was being attached to that oversized behomoth of a camera the Melipal (UT3), third of the VLT's. So here is a a picture of me actually doing some work, and not playing around in my computer room as some people would say.

Here you can see the M1 Cell, which contains the large eight point three metres mirror, difficult to see as it reflects everything.

Up the mountain

Came up to Paranal today, trawling through my one hundred and fifty emails that were sent whilst I was off shift. Most of them are automatic luckily. Lets see what will fail this week, Phil's already had a hard disk fail. This has been the month of failures.

three thousand metres.

Yesterday I took part in a three thousand metre swim event. The first time I had ever competed at that distance and boy was I not ready for it. If you follow some of my swim posts then you will know I had not even been training at this distance. So the actual distance came as a shock to my muscles and to my mind as well. From the start I was behind, the young guns racing out from the start. First thoughts were "I will be able to catch them back up when they tire." Well they did not tire and I ended up coming next to last, one of the persons did not finish. When I saw him stop at the shallow end I knew I had to continue. The continuing proving to myself that I have still got what it takes. I was so knackered that at some points I had to do a length of backstroke just to get in some variation.

Eventually the inner mind was telling me to just give up, not so bad you are thirty, and you are so far behind. But luckily my wife was in the audience so I could not give up. I carried on. I have never come that far behind everybody else in an event. I am not sure people even noticed I had finished.

Will I do it again? I hope so, its a great test of fitness.

3000m 49 minutes 53 seconds (1.39 100m Ave).

Happy Birthday Julia

Yesterday, the twenty first of June was my sisters birthday. Happy birthday Jools with lots and lots of love from Andrea and Ian xxxxx

Film: Tears of the Sun

Last night watch the latest Bruce Willis film called Tears of the Sun with Andrew. It was a good film, but not up to Bruce Willis's normal high level. Tom Skerrit was in the film, brought back memories from Top Gun. Again he was on a the deck of a air craft carrier, this time though as the Captain who rather unbelievably was talking on his satellite mobile phone to his man in the field Bruce Willis. This really annoyed me.

Other than the normal Hollywood over doing it with how good they are and sentimentality, the film was good.

Levis 501

Managed to fit back into my Levis 501's which were bought more less in my first year in Chile. They were my going out trousers. Waist at thirty six inches, they are a true test of any ones diet. I have been a thirty six when I was at University. Ten years later and I can still get into the same size.

NB: They are still a little tight. I will have to keep up the swimming and eating well. The newly discovered cheese cake here in Antofagasta will not help.

book: Evolution, by Stephen Baxter

I just finished reading Evolution, and book by Stephen Baxter, ISBN 0-345-45782-X. What great book this was, set me thinking like so many of the older sf books that I have read. The story tells the tale from the first primates to the very last. Each chapter introduces a new story in an epoch of primate history, of course with a bent towards Humans. This though can make it a little difficult to read, like reading twenty or so short stories but Baxter really mixes them well, he even has names from the first chapter used in the last and final chapter. This more or less what happens throughout the book, you get a feeling for the story this way. Allows you to see the time arrow of the book, not just short stories, a greater story is being told.

Its is just science fiction and not science fact, but as all sf books it has a healthy dose of science fact. I loved this book. The ending to book is surprising he finishes the history of primate history some 500 million years in the future, where the last primates live in symbiosis with a tree, and a surprising side line story is a Von Neumann machine is the only this that survives the human era. I reckon he might use these in another story in the future.

Stephen Baxter is a great author for me, I have read many of his books and this one is better than the rest.

Pregnancy so far

Another visit again to the Doctors today, this time to discuss the exam results that were taken yesterday. All were normal and the blood test where they test that you are pregnant had gone up considerably. If it was not for Andrea and I feeling tired at the Doctors I am sure we would have looked happier, we were late for the appointment because we were sleeping. I am sure I am getting the sympathy sleeping that Andrea is getting at the moment.

I am getting more and more used to the idea that I am going to be a Papa anytime soon. I wonder what my Dad was thinking when Mum was pregnant with Julia, their first born.

The other day Andrea and I were talking about what we would like to teach the baby. She would like to teach honesty, and I thought I would like it to be able to think for itself. Not always follow the crowd, make its own decisions.

Is the baby called an it until its born? Or a he slash she should be used?

The eco test is next, we can record it with a video as well. This is all so new.

Swim

500m 7.50 (1.34 ave)
10 x 100m 2mins
300m Legs
2x100 IM

Total 2k
50m pool

Film: Phone Booth

Andrea and I went to see Phone Booth today. Andrea really enjoyed, I felt it was a bit like a music video. Worth a watch, but wait until its at the video shop.

Moleskine and Pencil Sharpeners

How long has it been since you last used a Pencil sharpener, you know one of those things that takes a blunt pencil and hones it till the point could be used say for example puncturing your leg. I still have from school a piece of pencil lead in my leg. Well today I used one, its for the pencil that I will use for my new notebook, my moleskine. I can now take notes at all time. So all those ideas that come and go I maybe able to capture some of them. Cool.

I had been looking for notebook like this since I started using them for holidays, I thought they would be easy to find, not so here in the outer rim of the planet here in Northern Chile. I just went around with one of those ring binder notebooks. One of the exclusive features of this notebook is the elastic to hold the pencil in place, that is so necessary. If you have not got one then get one. Now.

Swim

500m Warm Up 7.48 (1.33 Ave)
5 x 100m on 2.30
500m Legs
4 x 100 breast/back 30s rest
100m swim down

Total 2k
50m Swimming pool

Legs

If I want to get any faster at swimming then I need to kick my legs like there is no tomorrow.

News Flash

Andrea is expecting our first child, she is due in February fifth, 2004. Andrea and Ian are both over the moon.

On the Cusp: Pregnant

It feels like a delicate time. Andrea and I are on a cusp, teetering, well really falling, you cannot be half pregnant, you are or you are not. Andrea and I are. Do I include myself in it? I think so, I was there at conception. Our waterfall has started to fall, although at only three milimetres in size at the moment, the waters are moving. Soon they will be raging. And apparently have an heartbeat.

Yesterday (Fri 13th) was the first time somebody has told me they are pregnant with my child. Do you know that Cheshire Cat, you know, the one that smiles all the time. Well that was me. There is also another side. One a litte more scarier; Responsibility. At thirty you would have thought I should already be ready. But this is BIG. Bigger than Andrea and I, it's an us. Something new in our world.

I have a degree in Biochemistry. I do seem to remember some lecture I did not miss about making babies. I think we were taught from my sperm and Andrea's egg to birth. Of course like most of the courses at University I don't remember all of it. However the point I want to make is; how amazing is this, how utterly fabagastly, up there, amazing is it that Andrea and I can do this. Not until it happens did I really think about it.

Laura Street and Zooropa(U2)

I remember Laura St., those cold mornings waking up and seeing my breath before my eyes. Knowing that I have to drag myself out of bed and walk Peggy, our first family Dog. My personal stereo and Zooropa, a song from the album of the same name. The start to that song used to be able to pick me up from anything.

It worked again this morning, its the last full day of my shift and getting out of bed was done in a semi-trance. I put Zooropa on, the start to the song worked just as it did all those years ago at Laura St. Stay is playing right now as I play this, breakfast is being eaten and I am ready for work. All thanks to U2.

Text Editors

Whats your favourite? Which do you use over and over again? Writing this right now I am using the Open Windows built in text editor, called descriptivley "Text Editor", its so plain and simple, its quite the elegant text editor ever. I suppose really I feel a certain amount of nostalgia for this editor, it was the first one I used to write real programmes on. Right now I am ufsdumping 1 disk to another whilst writing this, I am in my computer room at work, a place that is bloody cold right now, outside is the desert sun, unceasing. And well I just happened to be using one of my only Suns that had a monitor attached, and I just knocked up a quick program to dump this disk to another, but have to wait here to press yes every so often for the ufsrestore command, perhaps it has a flag to say yes, I will need to read the man page. Hence the time to write this, if my boss is reading!

On my desk I use my own iBook, with of course Mac OS X. My favourite editor here is BBEdit. A little more function bloated than this Text Editor I am using at the moment. However, on the mac so far its my favourite.

Its has a few features I really like, color coding the code you are writing and such. However one feature I feel it is missing and for the price you pay for it it should really have it, and that is variable substituion. When I am writing perl and I want to write $color_scheme_red variable, it should allow me tab, or right mouse click and pick the variable I want. I see this in the Windows world with the Visual Basic app a work collegue uses. I hope this sometimes gets put into the app sooner or later.

However on comparison between this Text Editor and BBEdit I would say the bells and whisltes only make is marginally a better editor, half the stuff I don't need, or am not sure how to.

Then there is vi. When I started the above mentioned job, the first one, with this editor, they introduced me to vi, I could not get my head around it. It seemed to be so stupid. I said I would never learn to use it. Day to day this could be my most used editor now, especially working as a SysAdmin. Its so powerful, and works on any *NIX machine more or less the same way. That was some piece of great design.

Only another file system left to dump, but its a big one; 1.3Gb. Think I will go and show my face in the control room and see if all my users are happy.

Twists and Turns

Life, it never goes as straight as you expect it to, its like all the roads in England, the road map, never straight always curving and many different routes that could take you to the same place.

Keeping with the anology there are also road blocks, crashes or road works. Not sure were speed cameras would fit into this anology, probably somewhere. You could of course get lost and find yourself in an unexpected place, maybe nicer than the place you were planning to go to.

"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."
John Lennon.

Sunset, so special

I walk out from the light irradiated, false environment'ised computer room, with Bowies "Slow Burn" pumping into my ear canals via my iPod to see a spectacular sunset. He is telling me "These are the strangest days," how true to the word can he be. From cold/false/colorless to hue blues, oranges like you have never seen, deep reds, standing above the clouds, that stop my wife from seeing the same sunset, then yet again clouds higher than the jet liners roads. "These are the days, the strangest of all he tells me."

The sun falls finally over the other side, my bones feel the chill. All in a song. I think at times like this of my Wife, who could not want to share the moment with the one they love, quite truly. The blues darkens, the colors go to other side of the spectrum, my Oakley enhanced eyes no longer useful. I go back to my white out computer room, enlightened for the while, with thoughts of my wife and the mental photo I just took.

Paranal and The Guardian

Paranal Hotel, which we call the Residencia not hotel, say the management, has made it into the Guardian. The article seems to be a little high brow for my liking, and not at all what we think of the place we call home whilst at work up here in Paranal. As to the not needing television line, he is full of it.

Happy Birthday Sarah

This is a belated Happy Birthday to Sarah, she was I am told 40 yesterday. May she have a good decade in the 40's, with all the luck, health and happiness. Love Andrea and Ean.

Bad day - work/home

It was a bad day today for Andrea and I. Andrea went to the dentist today for something she thought was going to be routine and has turned out to be quite the opposite, she is being fitted with a gum shield to stop her gnashing her teeth at night, today she thought it was a fitting, but apparently she has had to wear this special brace all day that is hurting her muscles in her face. She has not been a happy Castora.

I at work had a right mare of a day. One of our core machines went down that NFS serves accounts, amongst other things, to other telescope machines. Could we get it back up and running, no we blooming well could not, until about an hour ago, some seven hours later. At the moment we reckon two hardware faults happened at the same time after we moved the machine. Re-arranging computer rooms just to keep to a layout plan sometimes is not worth it, especially if all the machines are properly name tagged. We as SysAdmins should know where the machines are.

Boy what a day...

Sheet metal worker listens to?

Walking across to the office this morning the first thing I notice on my way is the sheet metal workers listening to HEAVY METAL, what else could I have expected. Albeit this is the first time I have heard them playing heavy metal, usually its some Latin American Salsa type music. I would say the ACDC fits a lot better.

Rick and Wendy

Some friends of ours (Andrea and Ean) from Antofagasta are traveling back home to Australia, via S.A and USA and Canada. You should read their Intitour website. It has diaries and some photos as well.

Rick and Wendy used to be, before they left our local travel agents here in Antofagasta. When I first arrived here in Chile they were like a safety beacon, they were the only place were I could by my tickets home for holidays, when no other agencies had English speakers. God knows what I would have done with out them for those first few years, before I started to learn some more Spanish.

Back on the stick of rock

Work started again today, I spend the next eight days up here in Paranal, the site of the world?s largest telescopes. The altitude here is 2600m; the humidity sometimes cannot be reliably measured, as it?s too dry. Weather conditions hardly vary; we have on the whole blue skies nearly everyday. If there is a change day to day then it is the wind. Today is mildly windy one. Most of these aspects of this place make it one of the world?s best locations to do Astronomy, our raison d'Ítre. Here as promised is a photo of three of the worlds largest single mirror telescopes.

The small one in the background is the aptly named VST, which stands for Very Small Telescope. It stands, dwarfed amongst its four larger cousins of the VLT, the Very Large Telescopes.

Swim - Competition

50m Back - 35.02
50m pool

Swim - Competition

50m Free - 28.83
50m pool

Red Dwarf

Finally my Red Dwarf DVD's came from Amazon.ca, they are a joy to behold. I have yet to show them to my Chilean wife, I am not sure she will get the humor. What a flash from the past those series were.

Swim

500m Warm Up (8.12)
5 x 100m sprint 2mins
4 x 100m breast/back 30sec rest
300m legs
200m Warm down

Total 1900m
Pool 50m

Who visited?

In my dreams last night my long dead friend visited me. He appeared as I remember him most as a child, before we became teenagers. I hugged and cried when I saw him. I woke up crying as well. See you laters Scott Simpson.

Reloaded Helpings

Yep, I went for the second time at the cinema to see the Matrix, not sure of the last time that I saw a film at the cinema twice, either I have too much money and time or the film was really good. The film was really good. I completely enjoyed the film for the second time. This time though was not as good as the first, we were stuck right at the back of the cinema, the sound was totally c-r-a-p, but we got used to it after a while. The cinema was absolutely full as well, this is the second week and it was totally full.

This time with for-knowledge we stayed to watch the trailer of the next film, no story was given away but it looked like it was more action packed, if you can imagine that. The moral of this blog, if you have not seen this movie then go and see it!

Swim

Rest Day
2 x 400m (1st=6.05, 1.31 Ave. 2nd=6.16, 1.34 Ave.)

Total 800m
50m Pool

Swim

500m Warm Up - 7.53 (1.34/100m Ave.)
5 x 50m - on two minutes, walk around
3 x 100m - breast/back 45s rest
300m - legs only
500m - 7.57(1.35/100m Ave.)

Total 1850m
50m pool

Yoga update

Well I enjoyed and found it rather difficult. I would liken the experience to Tai Chi. Looks easy to watch, but can make you legs shake after about 10 min of doing it if you are not accustomed. Yoga though seemed to get the flexibility and muscular workout about right. Also after a session you do feel quite relaxed. Very relaxed in fact. Have a go!

Adios

Just to prove that your older sister can do these sorts of things!!!!!

All well on the Stamford Walker-Smiths front. With less than three weeks to go til we leave for our holidays, its mad panic organising of accommodation etc etc

Everyone now healthy after antiobiotics - phew!

Awning up and still standing after high winds and heavy rains.

Jools

Yoga: first look

Today I am going to Yoga. That was a bit Matrix'esque, like Neo saying "I know Kung Foo." I know nothing of Yoga only that it makes you more flexible and every so often stars claim to do it all the time and they look sexy (Madonna, Ginger Spice (Star?), my wife). I do have a confession about Yoga; when I was a child I watched and taped "Naked Yoga" on Channel 4, when it was in its early days, it had that yellow triangle glowing in the corner the whole show while women did Yoga naked. How cool was that to a pubescent boy.

I am off to Yoga with my wife, she has been doing it quite a while now. I would like to increase my flexibility, its been going for quite a while now, and I think I need it for swimming.

Swim

500m Warm Up - 8:12(1:39/100m Ave.)
5 x 100m on three minutes, sprint, did want to do more but felt exhausted
300m kick
200m Warm Down

Total 1500m
50m pool

Dentists and Adrenalin

Well the dentist experience is over for today, and quite honestly it was not too bad. I gave my adrenal glands a good work out though, most of the time I was pumping adrenalin around. I think the fear stems from the unexpected pain possibility. I don't mind pain per se, I mean when I do martial arts training I expect to feel pain, but its controled, but in the dentist chair pain can come at any time, and if you are unlucky it will be that nerve renching pain. Today though was OK and the Dentist explained all, and when I checked my gums, which I had not done before he explained there just maybe some pain, well that was not that much, few.

Mantra for today then is: "Don't be scared of good dentists."

Dentist=fear

I must have the smell of fear upon me today, in a rash decision the other day I decided to make a DENTIST appointment, I am not sure what came over me. You see there is nothing more scarey than the dentist. I hate going to the dentist. The fear is of course not logical, I never have really had any bad episodes at the dentists, never have they failed me. It's just the number of things they put in my mouth, it's just to much to take. Then its the unexpected pain as they probe around in your mouth with sharp intruments, ahh no more.

I will report back later with my experiences, wish me luck.

90210

Has anything really changed? I sit here on the couch watching of all things Beverly Hills 90210. Hence the question. I remember years ago watching in England with my sister the cool new show from the US......Then years later in Chile here I am watching 90210 again, of course I am not as concentrated on it now as I used to be.

Shift end

Today is the day I leave Paranal and go off shift. Wey Hey. I work a 8 day working 6 day rest shift pattern. And of all the days this has to be one of the better ones. I get to see my wife again!

Its windy and cloudy today, which makes a difference, we get about 80-90% days of pure cloudless sunny days. Today is an exception. The astronomers wont like it. I will in future post a few pictures here of Paranal, working at the site of the worlds largest telescopes does allow you to have a few photo ops.

Un Mundo

Mirando la tv me topÈ con un proyecto bonito, www.1giantleap.com
La increÌble variedad de personas, m™sicos e instrumentos, todos viviendo en un mundo, en el mismo mundo.

Younger

Everyday I must say to myself I will never be any younger than this.